SYMPTOMS

Since the release of Nuke 11, there have been several users experiencing crashing immediately after launching Nuke in interactive mode (GUI) or noticing minor errors and GUI inconsistencies. These issues are happening starting with Nuke 11 and are not present in any previous Nuke releases (Nuke 10.5v7 and below).

They may occurs when:

no graphics card (GPU) is present on the machine from which Nuke is run

GPU drivers are disabled

the GPU hardware does not have at least 512 MB of video memory and driver support for OpenGL 2.0

CAUSE

Nuke's minimum system requirements state that in order to run the software you require a graphics card, and that your graphics card needs to have at least 512 MB of video memory and driver support for OpenGL 2.0.

This is also covered in our Online Help Installation and Licensing section under: Windows, Mac OSX and Linux

The cause of the crash on launch or GUI issues stems from running Nuke on a machine with:

no GPU

not installed or disabled GPU and/or drivers

having a GPU running an OpenGL version previous to the required 2.0 framework

having a GPU with less than 512MB of video memory

launching Nuke via a remote desktop session on a machine with no GPU or a GPU not meeting the above requirements

any combination of the above factors

By default, Nuke 11 requires a GPU in order to run all GUI processes correctly and can not use the CPU like it was the case prior to the 11.0v1 release.

This is due to the VFX Platform 2017 integration requirements for Nuke 11, that provides a standardized set of libraries for cross-compatibility. The particular cause is the update to Qt5, which requires OpenGL 2.0 to function correctly.

EXAMPLE

Here is a scenario where Nuke crashes on launch and the following GPU error related to 'QOpenGLShaderProgram' is displayed in the command prompt. This is due to the machine's GPU having an OpenGL driver version below 2.0, and being unable to load the information required to run Nuke 11.

RESOLUTION

If you are encountering a Nuke 11 crash on launch or other GPU related errors and/or GUI problems starting with Nuke 11, that cannot be recreated in the Nuke 10 releases (or earlier), please try the following:

Confirm that your graphics cards driver are updated to the most recent version

Ensure that your GPU is OpenGL 2.0 compatible

Ensure that your GPU has minimum 512MB of video memory

NOTE: You can not run Nuke 11 in interactive mode (GUI) without having an integrated or dedicated graphics card with the native OS graphics drivers installed, that meets the minimum system requirements of 512MB video memory and supports OpenGL 2.0.

FURTHER INFORMATION

If you've confirmed that your graphics card meets the minimum system requirements and has up to date drivers, and are still seeing issues then please open a Support ticket and let us know the problem you are encountering and the troubleshooting steps you have taken so far.